Cove joints have been used in various furniture and other joints, particularly in rattan, wicker, and bamboo furniture types or simulations thereof, where the joints are wrapped with cord, wicker or rattan strips, tape or similar material for appearance and to retain the joint members, and a wooden dowel is sometimes inserted and glued into a hole in the coved end of one joint member extending therefrom to be glued into a mating hole in the other joint member to add strength to the joint.
Other cove joints have been used in knock-down furniture and either riveted together or held in engagement by folding linkages or pintles and gudgeons external to the joints.
Still other cove joints found in log cabin construction, tool handles, green-house construction, and other diverse uses, are held together by various means, including eyebolts, split sleeves, and gravity, but none have the particular features of the present invention.
While the prior art has used elements of the present invention individually and in certain subcombinations, it nowhere discloses or suggests the particular novel combinations claimed in the present invention which form the basis for handsome knock-down furniture which does not have the usual junky knock-down lock and which can be store- or home-assembled from standardized components into exceptionally sturdy pieces which have a simple, graceful design of great contemporary appeal. The structural joints of this furniture appear almost seamless, have immense strength, can be tightened as necessary if hard use, old age, or weathering ever loosens them, and can be readily disassembled for space-saving storage or shipment if desired. The elongated cylindrical wooden structural components of this furniture are planned to be made from Roundwood.RTM. dowels on a special purpose machine fed cut-to-length dowels and producing finished components complete with hanger bolts installed, so that the basic structure of a piece of furniture can be assembled from such components and a supply of suitable cap nuts. Roundwood.RTM. dowels are themselves produced on a patented machine by a process which assures the most efficient utilization of raw logs with a minimum of sawdut waste by extracting the rounds directly from the logs, after which the green rounds may be kiln dried and machined to true roundness and smooth surface finish more expeditiously than by the more conventional processes of sawing squares from logs, drying the squares, and then producing rounds from the squares, so that the production of this type furniture should be highly material-, energy-, and labor-efficient.